About this book

May you live in interesting times. This is, probably falsely, claimed to be the second worst ancient Chinese curse one might wish upon one’s enemies. (The worst one could wish upon them would be “May you get what you want.”) We, it seems pretty obvious, happen to live in such times, when peace, prosperity, and living to a comfortable if slightly boring old age are no longer as assured as they were even one generation ago. But interesting times are not only unsettled, anxiety provoking times. They are also times full of potential since they force us to call into question previously settled assumptions, and to try to look at things in new ways. Thus they also are times when philosophy flourishes, since philosophy at its best is the relentless and highly focused process of questioning assumptions, making distinctions and seeking solid reasons to back up opinions on the most basic level. Philosophy is the attempt to uncover the truth about the nature of reality, our claims to knowledge and what really matters. If this may seem to be an overly abstract and presumptuous activity when everything is going according to plan, it might become a necessity in times of great social change and stress. Interesting times can force us to examine our assumptions precisely because they starkly reveal the weaknesses in those assumptions. In times such as ours, philosophy becomes more and more urgent. That is part of the motivation for this project.

However, it is often the case that philosophy is presented to those new to the field in two ways that discourage the kind of self-examination that interesting times demand of us. It either gets presented as a collection of historical curiosities, to be examined and explicated in ways more suited to historical artifacts than it is to urgent contemporary issues, or it gets smothered in technicalities as if it were of interest exclusively to a small group of people with the time and inclination to learn a highly abstract and specialized vocabulary and a set of microscopically detailed distinctions. Yes historical and textual accuracy is important in describing the development of philosophical thinking in its long and complex history, and yes it is important to be precise and make more and more distinctions to keep on clarifying what exactly we mean. But, it is also important to keep in mind that philosophical questions, methods and conclusions are also always attempts to address pressing human problems. What CAN we really know about things? What IS the nature of our lives, our deaths and what we might hope for? What SHOULD we really be doing with our all too fleeting time here on this planet? And yes, what does it all mean?

This book is an attempt to scratch two itches. The first of these is the desire to develop an approach to philosophy that is more directly relevant than other approaches, that shows how philosophical questioning is neither just a historical curiosity, nor a matter only for experts, but is something that makes a difference in our real lives.

The second itch I am trying to scratch has to do with initiatives in open education, and I’d like this text to contribute in its own small way to the much larger and more influential open source movement and philosophy of which I consider it a part. Knowledge is only ours to share. Yes of course writers, developers and publishers do hard work that deserves compensation. But intellectual property, it seems to me, is a false idol that deserves to be smashed. So here is my effort to chip away at it – knowledge should free us and and not sink us into both literal and figurative debt.

In addition the decision to place this text into a GitHub repository should be considered as an invitation for others to participate in its future development. Anyone can fork the repository where it resides and use it as a template for their own book project; offer suggestions for revisions, or contribute in other ways as well. Please use the “issues” section of the repository for making any major suggestions.